MySQL Founder Monty Quits Sun (Or Not) 148
Paul Boutin writes "A reliable source tells Valleywag that MySQL inventor Michael Widenius, better known as Monty, has resigned from Sun. Sun bought Monty's MySQL company in a billion-dollar deal last January. Brian Aker, who forked the Web 2.0-friendly Drizzle SQL database (and former Slashdot engineer!), remains at Sun." Kaj Arnö and Sheeri Cabral share their thoughts.
Re:Shoot (Score:2, Interesting)
Does your crystal ball tell you that?
Re:Is it still MySQL? (Score:4, Interesting)
You forgot the version 9 at the end, even though there was no 6, 7, or 8.
interesting timing (Score:5, Interesting)
Monty's been working on the interesting "Maria" transactional engine [mysql.com] (evolved from, and compatible with MyISAM), which is slated to become MySQL's future default engine.
Since they recently made a feature-complete ("no known bugs"!) release [blogspot.com] of Maria, I'm tempted to think that was his personal deadline to quit.
Josh Berkus [toolbox.com] (core PostgreSQL developer) also recently quit Sun. [toolbox.com]
I like Sun. I'm sad that they have lost these two brilliant database engineers, and I hope they go on and kick Oracle's (and that other company's) butt anyway.
Re:no golden handcuffs ? (Score:1, Interesting)
I think he is going to fork the GPL version and start from there. That way he has the money and the control over MySQL.
Smart cookie, that Monty!
Re:Please use this thread to do the following: (Score:5, Interesting)
Tell us how great your database is, (ie. postgres, mssql server, oracle etc..)
I'd rather tell why I think databases in general suck: Lack of standardization. It's one thing if you could do like with browsers and make compatibility chart with ANSI SQL, but it's choking full of proprietary extensions. Hopefully they'll sooner or later get around to supporting SQL:2003 which takes care of the worst ones. Here's one example, creating an unique ID:
The standard specifies a column attribute of: ... AS IDENTITY (non-core feature ID T174+T175).
GENERATED
PostgreSQL doesn't support the standard's IDENTITY attribute.
DB2: Follows standard, albeit with some restrictions on how identity columns may (not) be added to an existing table, etc.
MSSQL offers IDENTITY as a column property, but with a different syntax (not as intuitive and with less options) than the standard's specification.
MySQL doesn't support the standard's IDENTITY attribute.
Oracle doesn't support the standard's IDENTITY attribute.
And they bloody well all have a way of doing it, it's just five different ways. That's what I hate about databases, you don't pick one for RDBMS features but because you need to pick a language. It's like picking a computer because of the compiler. They seriously need to get the standards *ahead* of the implementations, like for example browsers and HTML/CSS standards. Or at least get a reasonable subset standard so you can write a non-trivial database neutral application.
Falcon architect Starkey also gone (Score:3, Interesting)
It's worth mentioning that Jim Starkey [wikipedia.org] (inventor of MVCC, etc) also quit recently. [firebirdnews.org] (He joined MySQL in 2006 [firebirdnews.org] to work on Falcon.)
So Sun has lost more database genius in 2008 than most companies ever had. :(
Re:no golden handcuffs ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless of course, you're a talentless, brainless, lying, two-faced, pony-tailed bastard with no future. Then you stay on until you get named CEO.
Oops, was that my outside voice again?
Re:Shoot (Score:5, Interesting)
No Crystal ball needed to see that Sun isn't long for this world.
Sun's market cap is down to $6.4 billion. Sun has over $2B in cash, $3B in receivables, and $1B in inventory and stock in other companies.
You could make a profit today (if you could buy the company for thet 6.4B, which you can't) by buying Sun, ceasing all sales and business activity beyond existing support contacts, and just gutting the company for the cash, real estate, etc.
If Sun falls much more, it *will* be profitable to buy and gut the company, as was done very frequently to companies in similar positions in the 80s. For any tech company that *wanted* Sun for some reason, it's nearly free to buy it today.
Heck, one of Suns few remaining large accounts might find it cheaper to buy Sun than to renew it's support contract!
I think the only reason why one of the big consulting companies (Accenture etc) hasn't bough Sun just for bragging right is that those are partnerships, and don't have the leverage.
Inventor? (Score:2, Interesting)
Since when does someone who codes up a partial SQL implementation get promoted to inventor status? It reminds me of a guy at work (one of those self-promoter types) telling me how he and his team "invented an XML".
Perhaps Linux inventor Linus Torvalds and Melissa inventor David Smith could chime in with their thoughts on this.
Re:Inventor? (Score:3, Interesting)
How is Linus any more of an inventor? He coded an operating system. Just because it's more work doesn't make it more of an invention. The "inventor" title should be reserved for people who come up with novel solutions of a new category.
Re:Shoot (Score:1, Interesting)
I think the only reason why one of the big consulting companies (Accenture etc) hasn't bough Sun just for bragging right is that those are partnerships, and don't have the leverage.
It would be stupid for any consulting company to buy Sun:
The consulting companies would lose any credibility of being vendor-independent and Sun would lose many of it's best brains because the fast-paced culture of the consulting business drives them away.